In The Time Of The Butterflies Part 2

At first the sisters were frightened. But then, they started receiving gifts, too: bolts of muslim for making convent sheets and terrycloth for their towels and a donation of a thousand pesos for a new statue of the Merciful Mother to be carved by a Spanish artist living in the capital.

Lina always told us about her visits from Trujillo. It was kind of exciting for all of us when he came. First, cla.s.ses were cancelled, and the whole school was overrun by guards poking through all our bedrooms. When they were done, they stood at attention while we tried to tease smiles out of their on-guard faces. Meanwhile, Lina disappeared into the parlor where we had all been delivered that first day by our mothers. As Lina reported, the visit usually started with Trujillo reciting some poetry to her, then saying he had some surprise on his person she had to find. Sometimes he'd ask her to sing or dance. Most especially, he loved for her to play with the medals on his chest, taking them off, pinning them back on.

"But do you love him?" Sinita asked Lina one time. Sinita's voice sounded as disgusted as if she were asking Lina if she had fallen in love with a tarantula.

"With all my heart," Lina sighed. "More than my life."

Trujillo kept visiting Lina and sending her gifts and love notes she shared with us. Except for Sinita, I think we were all falling in love with the phantom hero in Lina's sweet and simple heart. From the back of my drawer where I had put it away in consideration for Sinita, I dug up the little picture of Trujillo we were all given in Citizens.h.i.+p Cla.s.s. I placed it under my pillow at night to ward off nightmares.

For her seventeenth birthday, Trujillo threw Lina a big party in a new house he had just built outside Santiago. Lina went away for the whole week of her birthday. On the actual day, a full-page photograph of Lina appeared in the papers and beneath it was a poem written by Trujillo himself: She was born a queen, not by dynastic right, She was born a queen, not by dynastic right, but by the right of beauty whom divinity sends to the world only rarely.

Sinita claimed that someone else had written it for him because Trujillo hardly knew how to scratch out his own name. "If I were Lina-" she began, and her right hand reached out as if grabbing a bunch of grapes and squeezing the juice out of them.

Weeks went by, and Lina didn't return. Finally, the sisters made an announcement that Lina Lovaton would be granted her diploma by government orders in absentia. absentia. "Why?" we asked Sor Milagros, who was still our favorite. "Why won't she come back to us?" Sor Milagros shook her head and turned her face away, but not before I had seen tears in her eyes. "Why?" we asked Sor Milagros, who was still our favorite. "Why won't she come back to us?" Sor Milagros shook her head and turned her face away, but not before I had seen tears in her eyes.

That summer, I found out why. Papa and I were on our way to Santiago with a delivery of tobacco in the wagon. He pointed out a high iron gate and beyond it a big mansion with lots of flowers and the hedges all cut to look like animals. "Look, Minerva, one of Trujillo's girlfriends lives there, your old schoolmate, Lina Lovaton."

"Lina?!" My breath felt tight inside my chest as if it couldn't get out. "But Trujillo is married," I argued. "How can he have Lina as a girlfriend?"

Papa looked at me a long time before he said, "He's got many of them, all over the island, set up in big, fancy houses. Lina Lovaton is just a sad case, because she really does love him, pobrecita. pobrecita." Right there he took the opportunity to lecture me about why the hens shouldn't wander away from the safety of the barnyard.

Back at school in the fall during one of our nightly sessions, the rest of the story came out. Lina Lovaton had gotten pregnant in the big house. Trujillo's wife Dona Maria had found out and gone after her with a knife. So Trujillo s.h.i.+pped Lina off to a mansion he'd bought for her in Miami where he knew she'd be safe. She lived all alone now, waiting for him to call her up. I guess there was a whole other pretty girl now taking up his attention.

"Pobrecita," we chorused, like an amen. we chorused, like an amen.

We were quiet, thinking of this sad ending for our beautiful Lina. I felt my breath coming short again. At first, I had thought it was caused by the cotton bandages I had started tying around my chest so my b.r.e.a.s.t.s wouldn't grow. I wanted to be sure what had happened to Lina Lovaton would never happen to me. But every time I'd hear one more secret about Trujillo I could feel the tightening in my chest even when I wasn't wearing the bandages.

"Trujillo is a devil," Sinita said as we tiptoed back to our beds. We had managed to get them side by side again this year.

But I was thinking, No, he is a man. And in spite of all I'd heard, I felt sorry for him. iPobrecito! iPobrecito! At night, he probably had nightmare after nightmare like I did, just thinking about what he'd done. At night, he probably had nightmare after nightmare like I did, just thinking about what he'd done.

Downstairs in the dark parlor, the clock was striking the hours like hammer blows.

The Performance 1944.

It was our country's centennial year. We'd been having celebrations and performances ever since Independence Day on February 27th. Patria had celebrated her twentieth birthday that day, and we'd thrown her a big party in Ojo de Agua. That's how my family got around having to give some sort of patriotic affair to show their support of Trujillo. We pretended the party was in his honor with Patria dressed in white, her little boy Nelson in red, and Pedrito, her husband, in blue. Oh yes, the nun thing had fallen through.

It wasn't just my family putting on a big loyalty performance, but the whole country. When we got to school that fall, we were issued new history textbooks with a picture of you-know-who embossed on the cover so even a blind person could tell who the lies were all about. Our history now followed the plot of the Bible. We Dominicans had been waiting for centuries for the arrival of our Lord Trujillo on the scene. It was pretty disgusting.

All through nature there is a feeling of ecstasy. A strange otherworldly light suffuses the house smelling of labor and sanct.i.ty. The 24th of October in 1891. G.o.d's glory made flesh in a miracle. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo has been born! All through nature there is a feeling of ecstasy. A strange otherworldly light suffuses the house smelling of labor and sanct.i.ty. The 24th of October in 1891. G.o.d's glory made flesh in a miracle. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo has been born!

At our first a.s.sembly, the sisters announced that, thanks to a generous donation from El Jefe, a new wing had been added for indoor recreation. It was to be known as the Lina Lovaton Gymnasium, and in a few weeks, a recitation contest would be held there for the entire school. The theme was to be our centennial and the generosity of our gracious Benefactor.

As the announcement was being made, Sinita and Elsa and Lourdes and I looked at each other, settling that we would do our entry together. We had all started out together at Inmaculada six years ago, and everyone now called us the quadruplets. Sor Asuncion was always joking that when we graduated in a couple years, she was going to have to hack us apart with a knife.

We worked hard on our performance, practicing every night after lights out. We had written all our own lines instead of just reciting things from a book. That way we could say what we wanted instead of what the censors said we could say.

Not that we were stupid enough to say anything bad about the government. Our skit was set way back in the olden days. I played the part of the enslaved Motherland, tied up during the whole performance until the very end when Liberty, Glory, and the narrator untied me. This was supposed to remind the audience of our winning our independence a hundred years ago. Then, we all sang the national anthem and curtsied like Lina Lovaton had taught us. n.o.body could get upset with that!

The night of the recitation contest we could hardly eat our dinners, we were so nervous and excited. We dressed in one of the cla.s.srooms, helping each other with the costumes and painting our faces, for the sisters did allow makeup for performances. Of course, we never washed up real good afterwards, so that the next day we walked around with s.e.xy eyes, rosy lips, and painted-on beauty marks as if we were at a you-know-what-kind-of-a-place instead of a convent school.

And the quadruplets were the best, by far! We took so many curtain calls that we were still on stage when Sor Asuncion came up to announce the winners. We started to exit, but she motioned us back. The place broke into wild clapping, stomping, and whistling, all of which were forbidden as unladylike. But Sor Asuncion seemed to have forgotten her own rules. She held up the blue ribbon since no one would quiet down to hear her announce that we had won.

What we did hear her say when the audience finally settled down was that we would be sent along with a delegation from La Vega to the capital to perform the winning piece for Trujillo on his birthday. We looked at each other, shocked. The nuns had never said anything about this added performance. Later as we undressed in the cla.s.sroom, we discussed turning down the prize.

"I'm not going," I declared, was.h.i.+ng off all the goop on my face. I wanted to make a protest, but I wasn't sure what to do, "Let's do it, oh please," Sinita pleaded. There was such a look of desperation on her face, Elsa and Lourdes readily agreed, "Let's."

"But they tricked us!" I reminded them.

"Please, Minerva, please," Sinita coaxed. She put her arm around me, and when I tried to pull away, she gave me a smack on the cheek.

I couldn't believe Sinita would really want to do this, given how her family felt about Trujillo. "But Sinita, why would you want to perform for him?"

Sinita drew herself up so proud she looked like Liberty all right. "It's not for him. Our play's about a time when we were free. It's like a hidden protest."

That settled it. I agreed to go on the condition that we do the skit dressed as boys. At first, my friends grumbled because we had to change a lot of the feminine endings, and so the rhymes all went to pot. But the nearer the big day approached, the more the specter of Lina haunted us as we did jumping jacks in the Lina Lovaton Gymnasium. Her beautiful portrait stared across the room at the picture of El Jefe on the opposite wall.

We went down to the capital in a big car provided by the Dominican Party in La Vega. On the way, Sor Asuncion read us the epistle, which is what she called the rules we were to observe. Ours was the third performance in the girls'-school division. It would begin at five, and we would stay to the conclusion of the La Vega performances, and be back at el colegio for bedtime juice. "You must show the nation you are its jewels, Inmaculada Concepcion girls. Is that perfectly clear?"

"Yes, Sor Asuncion," we chorused back absently. But we were too excited about our glorious adventure to pay much attention to rules. Along the way, every time some cute fellows pa.s.sed us in their fast, fancy cars, we'd wave and pucker up our mouths. Once, a car slowed, and the boys inside called out compliments. Sister scowled fiercely at them and turned around to see what was going on in the back seat of the car. We looked blithely at the road ahead, quadruplet angels. We didn't have to be in a skit to give our best performance!

But as we neared the capital, Sinita got more and more quiet. There was a sad, wistful look on her face, and I knew who she was missing.

Before long we were waiting in an anteroom of the palace alongside other girls from schools all over the country. Sor Asuncion came in, swis.h.i.+ng her habit importantly and motioned for us. We were ushered into a large hall, bigger than any room I'd ever been in. Through a break in a row of chairs, we came to the center of the floor. We turned circles trying to get our bearings. Then I recognized him under a canopy of Dominican flags, the Benefactor I'd heard about all my life.

In his big gold armchair, he looked much smaller than I had imagined him, looming as he always was from some wall or other. He was wearing a fancy white uniform with gold fringe epaulets and a breast of medals like an actor playing a part.

We took our places, but he didn't seem to notice. He was turned towards a young man, sitting beside him, also wearing a uniform. I knew it was his handsome son, Ramfis, a full colonel in the army since he was four years old. His picture was always in the papers.

Ramfis looked our way and whispered something to his father, who laughed loudly. How rude, I thought; after all, we were here to pay them compliments. The least they could do was pretend that we didn't look like fools in our ballooning togas and beards and bows and arrows.

Trujillo nodded for us to start. We stood frozen, gawking, until Sinita finally pulled us all together by taking her place. I was glad I got to recline on the ground, because my knees were shaking so hard I was afraid that the Fatherland might faint right on the spot.

Miraculously, we all remembered our lines. As we said them out loud, our voices gathered confidence and became more expressive. Once when I stole a glance, I saw that the handsome Ramfis and even El Jefe were caught up in our performance.

We moved along smoothly, until we got to the part when Sinita was supposed to stand before me, the bound Fatherland. After I said, Over a century, languis.h.i.+ng in chains, Over a century, languis.h.i.+ng in chains, Dare I now hope for freedom from my woes?

Oh, Liberty, unfold your brilliant bow, Sinita was to step forward, show her brilliant bow. Then, having aimed imaginary arrows at imaginary foes, she was to set me free by untying me.

But when we got to this part, Sinita kept on stepping forward and didn't stop until she was right in front of Trujillo's chair. Slowly, she raised her bow and took aim. There was a stunned silence in the hall.

Quick as gunfire, Ramfis leapt to his feet and crouched between his father and our frozen tableau. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the bow from Sinita's hand and broke it over his raised knee. The crack of the splintering wood released a hubbub of whispers and murmurs. Ramfis looked intently at Sinita, who glared right back at him. "You shouldn't play that way."

"It was part of the play," I lied. I was still bound, reclining on the floor. "She didn't mean any harm."

Ramfis looked at me, and then back at Sinita. "What's your name?"

"Liberty," Sinita said.

"Your real name, Liberty?" he barked at her as if she were a soldier in his army.

"Perozo." She said it proudly.

He lifted an eyebrow, intrigued. And then, like a hero in a storybook, he helped me up. "Untie her, Perozo," he ordered Sinita. But when she reached over to work the knots loose, he grabbed her hands and yanked them behind her back. He spit these words out at her: "Use your dog teeth, b.i.t.c.h!"

His lips twisted into a sinister little smile as Sinita bent down and untied me with her mouth.

My hands freed, I saved the day, according to what Sinita said later. I flung off my cape, showing off my pale arms and bare neck. In a trem- bly voice I began the chant that grew into a shouting chorus Viva Trujillo! Viva Trujillo! Viva Trujillo! Viva Trujillo! Viva Trujillo! Viva Trujillo!

On the way home, Sor Asuncion scolded us. "You were not the ornaments of the nation. You did not obey my epistle." As the road darkened, the beams of our headlights filled with hundreds of blinded moths. Where they hit the winds.h.i.+eld, they left blurry marks, until it seemed like I was looking at the world through a curtain of tears.

CHAPTER THREE.

This little book belongs to Maria Teresa 1945 to 1946

Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception Saint's Day of our school!

Dear Little Book, Minerva gives you to me today for my First Communion. You are so pretty with a mother of pearl cover and a little latch like a prayerbook. I will have such fun writing on your tissue-thin pages.

Minerva says keeping a diary is also a way to reflect and reflection deepens one's soul. It sounds so serious. I suppose now that I've got one I'm responsible for, I have to expect some changes.

Sunday, December 9 Dear Little Book, I have been trying to reflect, but I can't come up with anything.

I love my new shoes from my First Communion. They're white leather with just a little heel like a grownup young lady. I practiced a lot beforehand, and I must say, I didn't wobble once on my way to the altar. I was so proud of myself.

Mama and Dede and Patria and my little nephew Nelson and my little niece Noris came all the way from Ojo de Agua just to watch me make my First Communion. Papa couldn't come. He is too busy with the cacao harvest.

Wednesday, December 12 Dear Little Book, It is hard to write in you here at school. First, there is hardly any free time except for prayers. Then, when I do take a minute, Daysi and Lidia come up sneaky and grab you. They toss you back and forth while I run after them trying to catch you. Finally, they give you back, giggling the whole time like I'm being silly keeping a diary.

And you might not know this, Little Book, but I always cry when people laugh at me.

Feast Day of Santa Lucia Dear Little Book, Tonight, we will have the candle lighting and all our eyes will be blessed on account of Santa Lucia. And guess what? I have been chosen to be Santa Lucia by all the sisters! I'll get to wear my First Communion dress and shoes all over again and lead the whole school from the dark courtyard into the lit-up chapel.

I have been practicing, walking up and down the Stations of the Cross with a blessed look on my face, not an easy thing when you are trying to keep your balance. I think saints all lived before high heels were invented.

Sat.u.r.day, December 15 Dear Little Book, What does it mean that I now really really have a soul? have a soul?

All I can think of is the picture in our Catechism of a valentine with measles. That is the soul when it commits mortal sins. Venial sins are lighter, like a rash instead of measles. A rash that goes away even without Confession if you say an Act of Contrition.

I asked Minerva what it means to her, having a soul. We had been talking about Daysi and Lidia and what I should do.

Minerva says a soul is like a deep longing in you that you can never fill up, but you try. That is why there are stirring poems and brave heroes who die for what is right.

I have that longing, I guess. Sometimes before a holiday or a birthday party, I feel like I'm going to burst. But Minerva says that's not exactly what she meant.

Sunday, December 16 Dear Little Book, I don't know if you realize how advanced I am for my age?

I think it's because I have three older sisters, and so I've grown up quick. I knew how to read before I even started school! In fact, Sor Asuncion put me in fourth, though really, I should have been in third with the other tens.

My penmans.h.i.+p is also very pretty as you will have noticed. I've won the writing prize twice, and I would have this week, too, but I decided to leave some i's undotted. It doesn't help with the other girls if you are best all the time.

At first, Mama didn't even want me to leave home. But she agreed it made sense for me to come since this is Minerva's last year at Inmaculada Concepcion, and so I would have family here to look after me my first year.

Don't tell anyone: I don't like it here that much. But after we talked Mama into letting me board, I have to pretend. At least, Minerva is here with me even if she sleeps in another hall.

And you are here with me too, my dear Little Book.

Thursday, December 20 My dear Little Book, Tomorrow, Minerva and I take the train home for the holidays. I can't wait! My soul is full of longing all right.

I long to see Papa, whom I haven't seen in three whole months!

And my rabbits, Nieve and Coco. I wonder how many new ones I have?

And Tono and Fela (they work for us) making a fuss over me.